Algorithmic Normativity and the Transfoprmation of Human Rights Governance in the European Union

<p class="p1" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-language-override: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; color: rgb(11, 90, 178);"><b>Algorithmic Normativity and the Transformation of&nbsp;</b><b>Human Rights Governance in the European Union</b> <p class="p2" style="margin-bottom: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-language-override: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-feature-settings: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;">Artificial intelligence has become a testing ground for the redefinition of human rights in regulatory practice. While earlier scholarship focused on identifying risks and protections, less attention has been given to how AI governance itself recasts the normative structure of rights. This paper argues that recent European initiatives—most notably the AI Act, the Digital Services Act, and the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on AI and Human Rights—mark a shift from the juridical protection of rights to their algorithmic governance. Drawing on political theory and legal-institutionalist analysis, the study examines how values such as fairness, accountability, and transparency are operationalized as quantifiable compliance standards. This proceduralization of ethics transforms human rights from moral-legal imperatives into technocratic design criteria. Through discourse and document analysis of EU policy texts and stakeholder consultations, the paper shows how the Union’s “human- centric” rhetoric legitimizes a new regime of algorithmic normativity—one where legitimacy derives from risk management rather than democratic deliberation. By uncovering this transformation, the paper contributes to understanding how AI governance reconstitutes the moral grammar of human rights and how institutional authority over rights interpretation migrates from courts to technical regulators.